


Footprints in the snow

by Lieju



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, me thinking how the countries in hetalia actually work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:16:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8020630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lieju/pseuds/Lieju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Canada takes little walks in the wilderness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Footprints in the snow

Canada stood at the end of the road, staring into the snow-covered forest.

 

Sometimes he just had to get away from it all. He could feel Kumajirou struggling and let him down. The bear shook himself, and wordlessly stepped into the forest.

 

Canada let him go. He would be back.

 

Canada took his backbag.

 

It looked like he could follow a path, at least to begin with, so he didn't put his snowshoes on just yet. He stepped onto the path and started his trek. No need to go all out instantly.

 

It seemed like someone had walked there maybe a day ago, human footprints in the snow still vaguely recognizable.

 

But eventually the path disappeared into the pristine snow, and Canada took the snowshoes off his back and fastened them on.

 

He was hardly in the great wilderness yet, but he could already feel the peace coming over him. And when he kept walking, step by step into the wild, all the politics and human troubles seemed to just stay behind. He was starting to feel hot after a while and stopped, removing his woollen cap. This was familiar, still, just him getting warm from physical exercise.

 

He continued, eventually spotting a place for a camp. He'd need to sleep for the night.

 

So he made camp, getting his mountaineering tent and sleeping bag out. He still had water in his canteen, so no need to melt snow for drinking.

 

A polarbear, wild and huge, stood somewhere in the forest, watching him. It would not respond to the name 'Kumajirou' now, but it still took the opportunity to help itself for the sausage Canada left in the open.

 

...

 

He woke up to the brisk winter morning. Time to move on. But he could tell he would not need the tent next night, and left it behind.

 

Next time night came he simply curled in a ball under a tree.

 

He could tell, there were no humans around. A moose was evaluating him somewhere on the hill he was going to climb next, and satisfied he was not a threat, returned to chew on the birch tree.

 

Canada breathed in deep, and discarded his cap. He was lucky, to have lands with this much emptiness.

His brother had been much like him once, but these days, whenever he mentioned it, America would ignore him. Not the kind of off-handed way he was used to.

But the kind of very deliberate 'I'm not talking about this' kind.

 

He wondered about his Southern brother sometimes.

It wasn't like he didn't have wildness in his lands, but he preferred to experience it by driving a car through the empty desert or flying a helicopter over one of his forests.

 

Observing it from a far, speeding through it.

 

Never becoming a part of it.

 

Canada wondered, not for the first time, if Russia ever did this.

 

His lands were even greater, but Canada got the feeling he used lot of energy to ignore that side of himself.

But he was certain Siberia had its secrets.

 

The snowshoes started to hinder him more than help at this point, so they were left behind, and his shoes soon followed.

 

Canada set a bare foot on the newly fallen pristine snow, enjoying the feeling. He smiled, listening to the sound of snow under his feet, amused by the idea that someone would see the human footprints in the snow, and wonder...

 

Maybe decide to follow them, only for them to disappear.

 

He continued forward.

 

 

...

 

 

Francesca was just walking back to the logging camp when she spotted someone barefoot, walking in the snow.

 

"Hey!" she called out."Do you need help?"

 

It was a young man.

No, not a man, something like a man-shaped thing, a piece of snowstorm given form.

 

Wild and untamed and empty of humanity.

 

He walked past, and after he had gone she had already forgotten he had been there.

 

 

...

 

It was everywhere.

 

In the brisk winter air, on the snow that laid on the ground, deep in the frozen ground.

But then little by little it started to feel the presence of something else.

 

At first it avoided them, fearing it would be permanently changed by the odd warmth that was radiating from them.

But after a while it remembered feeling this warmth before, and realized it had started to miss it some time ago.

So it drifted closer to what it eventually recognized as people.

Its people.

 

And in doing so it started to gain more and more of the humanity of those people.

And eventually, where there had been a gust of icy wind there stood a young man.

Who for a careful observer seemed to never quite be there.

 

And for most people who never paid attention to that, a someone who just seemed to fade from view somehow.

 


End file.
